


call me from the road

by shoelaces



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, i will level with you here, i'm sure there's something in here for you, that i cannot possibly tag everything, the major character death is all canon, there are so many friendships and so many of them are ambiguously romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21736630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoelaces/pseuds/shoelaces
Summary: Interlinking vignettes from a quiet world, told through seven characters across their lives.orThe importance of friendships in a secret spy organisation is not to be underestimated. Love like this can't be explained, only written down.
Relationships: Beatrice Baudelaire & Bertrand Baudelaire & Lemony Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire & Kit Snicket, Bertrand Baudelaire & Dewey Denouement, Dewey Denouement & Ernest Denouement & Frank Denouement
Comments: 26
Kudos: 44





	call me from the road

**Author's Note:**

> dear lord i have lost my mind. i started this in march, got 400 words in and got stuck. in the last few days, this fic possessed my entire being and allowed me to write nothing else. it's possible this is noticeable. there may be inconsistencies in here with canon because my books are at my parent's house, this somewhat exists in conjunction with The Crooked Kind but again there may be inconsistencies, and i do not have a beta reader! nevertheless, i hope you enjoy it!
> 
> title is from a time to talk by robert frost
> 
> the song playing on the radio in dewey's middle section is called "burning the midnight oil"

Dewey is nine years old and in a frightfully boring code-breaking class when Bertrand makes himself known in his life.

He’s been dimly aware of Bertrand’s existence before, of course, as one being trained to spy does not miss the existence of an entire classmate. But Bertrand is a teacher’s pet and a hard worker, so he’s had no reason to commit much detail about him to the library he keeps in his head.

This changes when their teacher hears something about twins and triplets being able to formulate secret languages among themselves, and swaps Frank and Bertrand’s seats. Apparently she’s worried it’ll give them an unfair advantage.

Frank gets up and before Dewey can really note the empty seat next to him, Bertrand is neatly placing his pens and paper on the desk and taking a seat. 

“Hello,” he says, rather formally. “I’m Bertrand.” He sticks his hand out for Dewey to shake and their teacher hushes them. 

“I know who you are,” Dewey whispers back, but takes the handshake. Bertrand has cool, steady hands. His eyes are a striking blueish-grey and they scan Dewey for a moment before he turns back to his work. His tongue pokes out a little when he focuses on writing.

Dewey watches him a little longer, then picks his pen back up. Bertrand accidentally kicks him in the leg a few times as he swings them back and forth, but he doesn’t really mind.

Frank sulks later about being moved, fretting that Dewey is somehow now alone in the world. Ernest rolls his eyes at them and says he should make friends with him. This seems like a reasonable plan. Bertrand is smart and friendly, even if he sometimes rats people out before they can play a prank. He never seems to mean any harm.

Keeping this in mind, Dewey arrives at their next class with the little goal of talking more than he usually does. He’s normally close to silent in most classes, letting Frank do all the talking for both of them, which Frank likes to do because he’s just a tiny bit of a control freak.

It may be starting to get to him that all his friends are really just friends with his brothers who bring him along for the ride. He’s the third part of a package deal, and it would be quite nice to make a friend on his own.

So when Bertrand drops into the seat next to him and offers him a square of chocolate that his mentor gave him, he takes it with a genuine smile.

“Your mentor gives you chocolate?” He asks, flicking through his notebook. “Mine doesn’t give me anything.”

Bertrand smiles at him again. It’s such an uncomplicated smile, just a genuine expression of friendliness. “I firmly believe they should be giving you chocolate,” he says. 

“Thank you for your support,” Dewey replies, laughing a bit. It’s good chocolate as well. They sometimes get some plain chocolate with their dinners, but this is clearly an expensive brand that he’s never had before. Bertrand’s sharing of it is very kind.

He tells his brothers about it later, and Frank huffs a bit about the rules, although he still smiles at him, and Ernest nods wisely.

“You need friends in a place like this,” Ernest says, and Dewey nods and pretends to understand as he reads through his notes and thinks that they are a great deal more interesting with Bertrand next to him.

* * *

“Thank you for your support,” Kit hears Dewey Denouement say to Bertrand, and she briefly twists in her seat to look at them. They’re sitting with their heads bent so close together that they’re practically touching and Dewey’s tiny smile is exactly how she knows that it’s Dewey. Ernest has a wide, bright smile that looks like it’s for absolutely everyone in the room. Frank doesn’t really smile.

“K,” Beatrice says, and she feels a light kick at her shoulder. “If you’re going to stare, don’t make it so  _ obvious _ .”

Beatrice Baudelaire is something of a force of nature. She never really asked to be friends with Kit, she just sort of blustered into her life one day and never left. Right now, she is sitting on their desk, swinging her skinny legs back and forth. Her knees are bruised, and there’s a plaster on the left one. Kit isn’t sure what she did, but she’s certain it was ridiculous and admirable. Beatrice doesn’t do anything by halves.

“I’m not staring, B,” she hisses back.

“Sure,” Beatrice quips, then swings her legs around and drops into the seat next to Kit. “I know.” She winks, and Kit ducks her head to look at her exercise book, because she’s not sure what to do with her face. “O, is he staring?”

“What?” Olaf, behind them, looks up. “I mean, yeah, probably.” He flushes a little pink.

“Do you have a crush on him?” Beatrice asks.

“Why would I have a crush on D?” Kit scoffs.

Beatrice’s face splits into a wide grin. “I  _ never _ said I meant D!”

Olaf cackles with laughter.

Damned spy classes.

“I’m bored of boys now,” Beatrice announces before Kit can defend herself. She has this tendency to change topics on a dime. Sometimes it works in Kit’s favour. “What are you writing?”

“Just stuff,” Kit replies, because she doesn’t want to explain her poem.

Their teacher walks in before Beatrice can reply, and she flips open her notebook, tears out a page and scribbles something down whilst the man’s back is turned. Before Kit can ask what she’s written, she folds it into a paper airplane and sends it sailing across the room.

* * *

Something sharp but fragile hits Jacques in the back of his neck, a little pinch on the soft skin. When he whips around, his sister dissolves into a flood of giggles and Beatrice smiles her Mona Lisa smile.

Their teacher isn’t looking, so Jacques picks the paper up off the floor. It’s folded into a paper airplane, but he doesn’t unfold it yet.

“E,” he says to the boy next to him, who is sitting with his shoulders hunched and his fists curled. “Look at this.”

There’s not much to look at, but he likes to draw real smiles out of Ernest when he can. He’s a storm of a child, and it makes him very easy to be friends with, but also impossibly hard. He has a slightly wild tendency towards the unpredictable, and it draws everyone in before he cuts them off in a sudden burst of emotion.

Whatever Beatrice has written, Ernest seems genuinely amused, and he tucks it into his shirt pocket, eyes flickering around the room.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to show me that,” Jacques says eventually.

“One day, Snicket,” Ernest replies absently, expertly folding it into a little crane. “When you’re all grown up.”

“You’re supposed to call me J,” Jacques reminds him, though he likes the way Ernest makes his name sound. It’s kind of nice to hear it from someone else’s mouth. It reminds him that he’s real. 

“I’m supposed to do a lot of things,” Ernest says, his voice measured. “Nothing will make them like me, though.”

“Maybe if you stopped trying to escape.”

“Maybe if  _ they  _ stopped giving me reasons to.”

Jacques doesn’t know how to argue with that, so he just turns back to his work and watches the ink blot grow larger on his paper.

* * *

_ When you’re all grown up _ turns out to mean when they’re sixteen, and Jacques finds Ernest crying in the bathroom. 

He was definitely not planning on getting caught, because he doesn’t fucking crave validation at every turn like Frank does, and he doesn’t need his hand held at every inconvenience like Dewey (and he doesn’t mean any of this, he loves them, he is just so angry) but Jacques has a loud mouth and heroic tendencies that tend to mean he walks in on every crisis Ernest creates.

“Who died?” Jacques asks, clearly taking in his tear-stained face. Then, remembering the kind of lives they lead: “Oh shit, who died?”

“No one,” Ernest says, wiping at his nose and feeling stupid. “You don’t get any good little soldier points for cheering me up, Snicket.”

“Yeah, I’m not here for  _ points _ ,” Jacques frowns. “And before you say it, no I was not sent by Frank.”

“I’m just impressed you know I’m not Frank,” Ernest snaps back.

“I don’t usually,” Jacques says. “Frank doesn’t cry. Ever. Does he have tear ducts?”

“Allegedly. There are rumours.”

“Is this about Dewey?” Jacques takes a seat on the sinks in a sort of laid-back too cool for school pose which kind of makes Ernest want to hit him. “I can’t imagine how hard that was for you.”

He hates lying. He hates it so much it makes him sick. He would gladly die right here so that Dewey could step into his shoes and end this whole bullshit lie, though he’s sure Dewey wouldn’t want to inherit the consequences of every stupid thing he’s done. 

“Yeah,” he says, because it is, it’s about what VFD is doing to his family with this lie. “Yeah, I just miss him.”

“He was very noble,” Jacques says, and Ernest’s stomach turns but he grimaces his way through it. “It was a tragedy to lose him.”

_ He’s not lost _ , Ernest wants to scream at him.  _ He’s in our room with his books, and he’s writing down everything he knows about all of us so he doesn’t forget. _

“Yes,” he says instead. “A terrible one.”

Jacques doesn’t say anything else to fill the silence. There’s nothing else to say.

Ernest takes the little paper crane from his pocket, the one he’s carried with him since he was nine in code-breaking class because it’s a reminder, tucks it into the breast pocket of his friend’s suit.

“You’re a big boy now,” he says flatly, and ducks around him out of the bathroom to look for the girl who gave it to him.

_ Don’t trust everything you hear, only everything you read _ and he has read it over and over again and trusted it more than a word out of his mentor’s mouth. Beatrice will be one of the ones to see it, he thinks. He’s not sure when, but it’s awfully lonely being the only one.

_ In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king _ is a dirty lie, he reckons. They’re all much happier not seeing VFD for what it is.

* * *

Beatrice is typically one for theatrics of every definition, which is why it’s surprising even to her that she’s so goddamn quiet about this  _ thing  _ with Kit Snicket.

Kit is quick-minded, funny, smart, and a voracious reader. She is also exceedingly beautiful, which is starting to cause problems. 

“Target’s in the yellow dress,” she tells her friend, hitching up her own gown to hurry down the stairs and match her pace. “We need to take her locket without her noticing.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Kit says smoothly, and Beatrice falls a little further. “You should dance with her.”

Beatrice raises an eyebrow.

“You’re a better dancer than me,” Kit says by way of explanation. “I haven’t danced with anyone since the Summer Ball.”

The corner of her mouth trembles a little. Beatrice remembers Kit dancing with Dewey, her own jealousy, now buried because Dewey never gets to dance with her again, and wants to touch the corner of her lips with her thumb.

“I’ll dance then,” she says instead, and Kit smiles and slips off into the crowd to monitor.

“I could always do it,” Olaf says, and she turns to look at him. She had kind of forgotten he was on this assignment too. “Dance, I mean.”

“I like dancing with girls,” Beatrice says. “You men are always so ungainly. And this way, I get to lead.”

He laughs and drifts off, probably to moon after Kit somewhere. She hopes he falls on his face, just a tiny bit.

Kit is right, as she is about most things. It’s easy, and Beatrice slips off with the locket around her own neck not ten minutes later. 

“Nicely done,” Kit says as she opens the rusty back door so they can both slip off into the night. “E is looking for you.”

“Which E?” Beatrice narrows her eyes. “I would rather not speak to one of them.”

“Yes, you would,” Kit huffs. “Even if just for the drama of it all. Neither of them are particularly honourable people, anyway. But I mean Ernest.”

“Ah, Ernie,” Beatrice says, keeping an unreadable expression. “My partner in crime. What will it be today? A B & E with B and E?”

“I should hope not,” Kit grumbles, but smiles anyway.

Beatrice smiles back, but feels a sharp twist in her gut. It is very hard to talk to Ernest and not come away questioning VFD. She’s not sure how Frank does it every day. But questioning VFD means questioning Kit, and Bertrand, and Josephine, and the many wonderful and noble people who fight fires and she can’t quite bring herself to do that yet.

Doing what she’s doing now, seeking out a stain on VFD’s name (a stain seems a harsh term, he is just a boy) to share in his misery, is the greatest act of rebellion she knows. Among all the wild, dangerous things she does, nothing else haunts her like questioning the spider right at the centre of the web they’re all in.

She just hopes that if she ever frees herself, there will be space for Kit in the metaphorical getaway car.

* * *

Bertrand runs into Beatrice when he is on his way to the kitchen to scrounge for extra sugar. 

She is wearing an evening gown and her hair is perfectly styled, although a few flyaways are starting to escape. Her feet are bare, and she’s carrying her heels in her hand.

She is ethereal.

She is also clearly too intensely focused to chat right now. He can tell that she’s going to find someone, because she’s walking purposefully with her face set into a little frown, and he can guess from context that it’s Ernest.

Out of what may be a desire to mirror her (apparently this is something people do when they have romantic feelings for someone) or is maybe a desire to see the mirror image of another person he loved, he goes looking for Frank.

“Hi,” he says when he finds him sitting on the window ledge looking out into the snowy mountains with his chin resting on his knees and one of Dewey’s books in his hands. “I would have brought tea if I’d known you were in the cold.”

Frank just looks at him, uncharacteristically shocked.

“A spot of teacher’s pet rebellion?” Bertrand suggests when Frank still doesn’t speak. He’s probably the Denouement he knows the least, but the burden they carry of model student means he feels like they know each other a lot better.

And Dewey is gone, so he supposes Frank has moved up a spot. Not that anyone can ever replace his best friend, or that anyone should ever even dream of coming close, but someone ought to fill the aching void in his life.

“Beatrice is with Ernest,” he says. “Probably talking him down from the proverbial ledge again.”

Frank looks kind of like he might cry.

“I think you have the world on your shoulders,” Bertrand continues. “All your work for VFD, worrying about Ernest, grieving...grieving him.”

“You can say his name,” Frank says hoarsely. “You should, really.”

“Dewey,” Bertrand says softly. He’s missed saying it. No one talks about Dewey anymore. It’s like he never existed.

Frank smiles a little. Frank never smiles.

Frank’s smile is suddenly awfully reminiscent of Dewey’s.

There is something itching at the back of his mind, a thought begging to come forward. 

“You brought Dewey’s book?”

“It...reminds me of him,” Frank says slowly, like talking is painful. Maybe it is. Bertrand has no idea how Frank carries his pain. 

“He was binding that before he died,” Bertrand continues, as if Frank doesn’t obviously know this. “He never finished.”

Memories come in flashes then: Dewey pressing a square of chocolate into his hand and smiling like he knew it would be his last, his whispers late at night with his lips by Bertrand’s ear about a solo mission, the announcement the next morning, Kit Snicket screaming, Frank and Ernest absent for days.

Everything neatly tidied away by the time Bertrand found the energy to go to the room that used to belong to his best friend. Frank looking exhausted and sick, Ernest flushed red with bruises on his skinny wrists.

Frank shifts then, as if he’s trying to hide some of the book, but Bertrand can already see that someone has finished what Dewey started.

“Theologic wars,” Bertrand says quietly, eyes fixed on Frank’s face. This is just a hypothesis to test. “So oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween.”

Frank closes the book.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, voice wobbling.

“Rail on in utter ignorance-”

“Bertrand.”

“Of what each other mean.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Don’t you?” Bertrand asks weakly. He thinks he’s probably being very stupid right now. “You really have no idea?”

“I’m sorry,” Frank says stiffly. “If that’s some poem you and my brother liked, I’m not familiar with it.”

“We kind of hated it,” Bertrand says, because he wants to share that now. “It was an inside joke, I guess.”

“It’s a terrible shame,” Frank says slowly, “To have an inside joke and no one to share it with.”

“Sorry for being weird,” Bertrand whispers. “I guess I just wanted to talk.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Frank says. “Never be sorry.”

And then, overcome with emotion very uncharacteristic of Frank Denouement, he hops from the window ledge and flees away, and the chocolate wrapper in his pocket drifts to the ground unnoticed by Bertrand, who can only see his hands as he buries his face in them.

* * *

When he is fifteen, Lemony Snicket picks up a chocolate wrapper in a hallway that overlooks the mountains and thinks that this is very odd indeed.

Bertrand used to get these chocolates sometimes, from S Theodora Markson, but as far as Lemony knows, he hasn’t received any in a while and he used to give them all to Dewey Denouement anyway.

Dewey Denouement was killed in a terrible fire on a solo mission months ago, so by all known human logic, he should not be running around the halls eating chocolate.

Nevertheless, some of his conversations with Ernest (usually heated declarations of “no one is actually that  _ nice _ ” in regards to Bertrand) are starting to make a little more sense. He had been wondering why Ernest’s insults were so lacklustre lately, and put it down to grief.

He decides not to tell anyone. Some theories only dig up more pain for everyone involved. If he’s not jumping to conclusions, there is a reason for this secret.

Instead, he finds R drawing maps in the library and sits down opposite her in silence.

“Hello, Lem,” she says, not looking up. “I don’t suppose you’re here to pine after a certain actress.”

“That’s your thing.”

“It’s everyone’s thing a little bit,” R says. “Us more than most.”

“We’re never going to get her,” Lemony replies, a little miserably.

“And yet look at us both.”

“Bertrand wins this round,” Lemony says softly. “And every round. Of everything.”

“How exhausting for him,” R hums. “Isn’t getting it wrong just a little bit fun?”

“Not when you’re suffering the consequences.”

“Maybe so,” she says. “But I think he misses Dewey too badly to do anything.”

He wants to share his suspicions with her, wants someone to validate that he’s not going completely crazy. But if he tells her, she’ll tell Larry, and eventually he’ll let on to Ernest, and that can only end terribly whether Dewey is alive or not.

Out of respect for the supposedly dead, he keeps his mouth shut. 

“Hey,” R says eventually, eyes lighting up with fire again. “O is in rehearsals tonight. You wanna sneak in and watch?”

“I’d like nothing more,” Lemony says, and laughs as she solemnly shakes his hand, forgetting for a moment the terrible burden of secrets.

* * *

When he’s twenty one, Dewey gets word that Bertrand is on his way to the hotel, and his first thought is  _ dammit Lemony. _

The third Snicket brother had figured out the truth a little while ago, and whilst he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little glad someone knew, he has been waiting for the news to spread.

Bertrand visiting isn’t all that unusual in itself. He stops by from time to time to discuss things with Frank, or carry on some bizarre back-and-forth little thing he’s got going on with Ernest (it’s something of a chess game, or perhaps a dance would better describe the strange electric tension of it all) but he always arranges it far in advance, and his brothers always take pity and warn him with weeks to spare.

Now, he apparently has half an hour.

“Sorry about this,” Frank says, looking genuinely regretful. “I really don’t know what he wants.”

“I know,” Dewey replies. “Did Ernest try and pay him a surprise visit? Is this revenge?”

“If I knew what Ernest was doing in his spare time, I wouldn’t have so many migraines,” Frank says dryly. “But I can’t imagine it’s a social call for me. Ever since you played dumb with him over your poem, he’s been distant.”

Dewey winces. He really does hate himself for that day.

“Regardless, I’m sure it’s nothing important,” Frank pushes a hand through his already perfect hair. “I can bring any food you might want down here?”

It’s a kind gesture, but Dewey has something else in mind.

“Can I stay upstairs? At the desk? I’ll pretend to be whichever one of you he’s not here to see.” Dewey bites his lip.

“Really?” Frank frowns. “Dew, are you sure?”

He’s clearly reluctant, but neither he nor Ernest are capable of saying no to Dewey, so half an hour later, Dewey is sat at the front desk waiting for Bertrand to arrive.

When he eventually walks through the hotel door, Dewey’s whole body feels like it’s fizzing. It’s been a very long time since he’s had an opportunity to talk to Bertrand, and their last conversation had been a disaster.

“Hello,” he says when Bertrand approaches the desk. “We weren’t expecting you.”

Bertrand examines his face for a moment, and Dewey burns under his gaze.

In the background, the radio drawls some country song.

_ I just called to tell you that I miss you, my old friend, burnin’ the midnight oil again... _

“My god,” Bertrand says eventually. “Beatrice wasn’t wrong.”

“I- what?” Dewey frowns. Is a rumour spreading about one of his brothers? Has Ernest done something terrible?

“Please don’t do that,” Bertrand looks very upset suddenly. “Please don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Bertrand-”

“I knew it! God, I knew it all the way back when we were sixteen. The book binding, the window ledge, why did I not just confront you?”

“I-” Dewey is speechless. Bertrand knows. His best friend, his confidant has unravelled it.

“No, don’t. I thought- for five years, I thought- Dewey, you were dead!”

“I am so sorry,” Dewey whispers. “I never wanted to. I begged them not to make me.”

“Oh my god,” Bertrand closes his eyes, and Dewey steps out from behind the desk. The lobby is mercifully empty.

“I am truly so so sorry,” Dewey repeats. His legs are shaking. He has imagined this reunion so many times, he cannot cope if Bertrand hates him.

“You were my best friend,” Bertrand whispers. “I loved you so much more than I ever loved anyone, and you died.”

“I missed you so much,” Dewey says. His eyes are stinging. “I spoke to you once, I couldn’t bear it.”

“As Frank.”

“And prate about an elephant not one of them has seen,” Dewey says lamely, finishing a poem that should have been finished five years ago. A poem, a reply, a declaration. It’s all five years too late, but he loves him just the same.

Bertrand finally unfolds his arms, and before Dewey knows what’s happening, he is enveloped in a warm, tight hug that smells like Hannukah spices and better days.

“Dewey,” Bertrand says into his chest. “Don’t you ever lie to me like that again.”

“I love you,” Dewey replies, neither a promise nor a refusal.

“You are never to do that for real.”

“Only if you promise too,” Dewey says. “I couldn’t abide a world without you in it. I wouldn’t last.”

“Very well then,” Bertrand smiles. “We’ll go out together or neither of us will ever die.”

“Agreed,” Dewey says, and feels a proper smile take over for the first time in a long time. “Now, I have some rooms to show you that I know Ernest won’t have bothered with.”

* * *

On the night of the opera, all their little stories interconnect. 

Dewey lays some of the groundwork when he reveals he’s still alive. Or, more accurately, when Lemony tells Beatrice, who tells Bertrand and Kit. Frank is incandescent with rage, and Ernest calls him Furious Frank for a week, which decidedly does not help the matter.

Beatrice supposes it was worth it to make Bertrand that happy again.

He’s not happy right now though, because they’re at the opera with a terrible plan, and nothing is ever going to be the same after they do this. 

“Are you okay?” Bertrand asks her, because she’s bouncing her leg uncontrollably next to him.

“Uh,” she says. “No.”

He just nods.

* * *

Kit brings the poison darts, because she loves Beatrice. 

She slips them into her hand at the bar in the interval and prays that somehow, some divine interference will change tonight’s path.

Kit wishes she loved Olaf the way she loves Beatrice, or even Dewey. A way that would stop her from harming him. But this has gone too far now, and she knows she can’t love him like that, only in a terrible way that is going to kill them both.

Everyone plays their part, and she has already played hers.

* * *

Ernest talks to Olaf, keeps him from chasing after Kit, because he is scared.

He is not sure which side he’s playing for as they talk, not sure who will gain points tonight. This is beyond the schism now. He is scared of Olaf, even if they’re supposedly on the same side. He is scared of himself and what he might do with one push too far. 

It’s all like a chess game, and he thinks Beatrice is probably the king. Dewey might be a rook, and Frank a bishop, but he is just a pawn in the great game.

Taking himself off the board is not an option. He makes his move.

* * *

Frank searches for his brother.

He wishes he could be sure that Ernest will not interfere, that he will let what needs to happen tonight happen, but his brother’s mind is no more readable to him than anyone else’s. Ernest is Ernest, but he’s not sure what that means these days.

His actions are decided by those around him. He does not choose what he does that night.

* * *

Dewey sits at home and stews.

It’s not that he wants to see what is going to happen tonight. He’s sure it will be horrific and the fallout is going to be tremendous and awful. If Frank and Ernest ever have a cordial conversation again, it’ll be a turn up for the books. If Bertrand comes back the same sweet person he falls asleep with every second Saturday, it’ll be a miracle.

Whatever happens, he will hear all the sides and write an objective account.

He does not make a move. He just writes each one down.

* * *

Lemony is the one who ties it all together.

He is also the one who sees how it all unfolds, from the start of that night to the finish many years later, because he is one of the few still alive to see it and know how it all started years ago.

He watches it all come together, a fine arrowhead of destiny streamlined into two little poison darts that sail through the air and strike both their targets perfectly. Beatrice and Bertrand always did everything perfectly. He would have been jealous if it wasn’t all so horrific.

Jacques drives him away afterwards.

He is the only one to understand each role that night, in its full awful entirety. It’s a difficult burden to bear.

* * *

Lemony does not win Beatrice or Bertrand in the end.

They fall in love in the same perfect way they do everything, and he drinks tea with R and tries to blame anyone but himself.

“I think you would have made a fine husband to either of them,” R says serenely. “If I was inclined towards your gender, I’d snatch you up myself.”

“Much obliged,” Lemony says, laughing a little.

“You don’t go pining forever now,” she says. “Find yourself someone nice. I rather fancy Josephine myself. Or perhaps I’ll just live in bachelor paradise with Larry forever.”

“It’s about time someone told him that,” Jacques appears in the doorway, leaning on the frame. “Really, Lem. You can’t hold on forever.”

Lemony just stares sadly back at him.

“Oh good grief,” Kit says somewhere in the background.

“I categorically do not take relationship advice from you, Kit,” he says. “You dated Olaf. And your current boyfriend is, for all intents and purposes, dead.”

“Are we  _ sure  _ Ernest’s not playing an elaborate game there?” Jacques frowns.

“It’s definitely Dewey, trust me, I know him,” Kit huffs. “And Ernest, as much as I hate him, would never use him like that.”

She doesn’t offer any defence on the Olaf front. Lemony is well aware she’s ashamed of that. He doesn’t push it.

“Speaking of Dewey, I’m going over there now,” she says. “He’s in research mode and I don’t trust that his brothers are making him eat.”

“They do care about him,” Lemony says.

“Of course. But they forget to feed themselves, so expecting them to look after Dewey is a bit much. It’s a brotherly affliction.”

* * *

The brotherly (and sisterly) affliction that plagues the Snickets, Jacques suspects, is a tendency to fall a little too in love with the wrong people.

Kit loves a cruel man and a dead man, who turned out to just be a liar.

Lemony loves someone who loved him back but for a myriad of complicated reasons, was never going to be his, and then he fell in love with the other man too.

Jacques loves a man who is about to do the stupidest thing in the world and marry Esme Squalor. 

He really has no idea how Jerome of all people has made him finally properly fall in love, but it’s noticeable. Upon his last visit to the hotel, he had got five minutes into talking about how nefarious Esme was before Frank had narrowed his eyes at him and asked why he had stopped flirting with him in a tone that was entirely ambiguous as to whether or not he wanted him to.

He desperately wants to stop Jerome from marrying her. It isn’t just for selfish purposes. He is truly terrified of what will become of his friend if she succeeds in beating him down until he’s nothing more than what she wants him to be.

When he sees him later that day, he tells him as much.

“I think you’re being paranoid,” Jerome tells him, which is rich coming from him, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I just think you could do better,” Jacques presses. “And safer, in fact.”

“I am perfectly safe,” Jerome says, with only a mild quiver to his voice.

“Monty says he’s patched you up more than once.”

“After  _ accidents _ !” Jerome hisses. “Jacques, what do you even think is going on?”

“I’m worried about you,” Jacques says, completely honest for once. “Jerome, please do not marry this woman.”

“She was your friend for years!”

“Friendship is...complicated in our circles,” Jacques frowns. “There are many people who we show kindness who are not good people. And there are many people who deserve more kindness than they get. But you’re not complicated, Jerome! You’re just my friend, and I want you safe.”

“Not complicated?” Jerome raises an eyebrow.

“Believe me when I tell you that with the company I keep, that is the highest of compliments.”

“I’m sure,” Jerome huffs. “Listen, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“I’m always going to worry about you,” Jacques says softly. “That’s my job.”

“What would you do?” Jerome frowns. “If something happened to someone you loved very much?”

“Nothing is going to happen,” Jacques tells him. “I promise you that.”

* * *

Something happens.

Actually, a number of things happen in very quick succession, and when Kit tries to order them all in her head, one sticks out like a jagged edge.

Lemony dies.

She is struck by such unbearable grief that she feels she loses everything except her basic senses- the feeling of Jacques’s rough coat as she cries into him at the funeral, the smell of Beatrice’s perfume when she hugs her. Once, that feeling would have made her heart jump into her throat, but now it’s just a hollow comfort.

Two of the Denouements come to the funeral. She’s unsure which two, but she wants to scream at them to stop playing their little game, because their brother is  _ alive  _ and they know this. They do not get to pretend they’re missing a unit. Not when it’s real for her.

One of them is avoiding her. It might be Dewey, because he feels terribly about the whole ordeal, or Ernest because he can’t stand her anyway, or Frank because he cannot handle displays of human emotion. She’s too out of it to be sure.

“What was the game you used to play?” Kit asks Jacques eventually, her breath making mist in the cold. “The stupid one.”

“Beethoven,” Jacques says, and his smile looks like it’s about to crack like a mirror. “How incredibly annoying of us.”

“It doesn’t feel annoying anymore,” Kit sighs. 

“Nothing feels annoying when they die, does it?” Jacques says, and there are so many wonderful people dead and gone now that she knows exactly what he means.

* * *

In the wake of all the tragedies surrounding them, Beatrice gets pregnant, and despite everything, Bertrand is overjoyed.

That doesn’t stop the ghosts from pressing down on their shoulders.

“Lemony,” he says, when they wonder if it will be a boy. “We should call him Lemony.”

“Oh, Bertrand,” Beatrice sighs. “If I’d known we were both harbouring those feelings, I’d have done something about it.”

“If we keep talking about ifs, we’ll never forgive ourselves anything,” he tells her. “It’s over, Bea.”

She smiles, a little peaceful, a little sad, and kisses him on the cheek.

“Ask Dewey about any legendary women when you see him,” she says. “Former heroes of VFD. He’ll know.”

“I always ask Dewey. About everything. What problems can a well-read man not solve?”

“Tell him to solve my fight with Esme.”

“Point taken. But I think he’s just enjoying watching that.”

“Fair,” Beatrice shrugs. “Gotta get your entertainment somewhere.”

* * *

Dewey mostly gets his entertainment from watching Bertrand pace around like an idiot.

“You have months to come up with a name,” he says, resting his chin in his hands. “Calm down, Bertrand.”

“What would you name  _ your _ child?”

“Kit and I have two siblings each,” Dewey says serenely. “More than enough choices for boys.”

“You’re still counting Lemony?” Bertrand asks gently.

“Well,” Dewey says, his eyes dark suddenly. “Yes. I think he still counts. If I was actually dead, Frank and Ernest wouldn’t be twins suddenly.”

“Fair enough,” Bertrand says slowly, though he has a sneaking suspicion that something else is going on. 

“Dewey is gender-neutral,” Dewey says, grinning. “And people  _ do  _ think I’m dead.”

“Ha ha,” Bertrand says, and kisses him on the forehead as he passes. “I will point that out to Bea. Are you pressing flowers?”

“They’re samples,” Dewey corrects glibly. “Violets.”

“I will leave you to your flowers,” Bertrand tells him. “Don’t forget to have dinner.”

“I won’t,” Dewey promises, but he barely looks up. “Also, Bea’s dragonfly wings are drying upstairs. We fished them out of the pond yesterday.”

“I will get those back to her,” Bertrand nods. “Thanks, Dew.”

Dewey salutes, and Bertrand gently closes the door behind him.

He passes Ernest on the way out. They don’t talk to each other, but Ernest snaps his fingers at him and smiles. 

Bertrand smiles back, quirks an eyebrow at him. It’s easier than saying anything out loud.

* * *

If Ernest had known that the last time he saw Bertrand Baudelaire would be passing him in the hallway of the hotel, he would have done more than make a stupid gesture.

Nevertheless, it is a good few years before Bertrand actually dies, so he supposes he can’t be blamed for that.

He still spends the day they get the news thumbing through old photo albums, searching for Bertrand and Beatrice’s faces in the crowds. He had seen Bea far more recently, even been smug that she had yet to introduce her children to VFD (god help those kids if they ended up like him and his brothers) but she still feels like a distant memory already.

Dewey is inconsolable. He and Kit are looking after each other, probably both painfully aware of the roles the two dearly departed played in both of their lives, and Frank is stuck with Ernest.

“Did you know?” Frank asks. “That this was going to happen?”

“Obviously not,” Ernest snaps, furious at the accusation. “Frank, I don’t kill my friends.”

“I know,” Frank says softly. “I had to ask.”

“I’m not Olaf or Esme,” he carries on, trembling. “Do you really think I would let anything happen to Bea? To Bertrand?”

“I don’t know anything,” Frank says evenly. “And I am very tired.”

“Yeah, well, me too.” Ernest says and storms out, taking the photo album with him. Frank won’t need it. He’s working three times as hard because he’s the only one of them currently holding it together, and the clock in their lobby waits for no one.

The worst part, the thing that really stings, is that the children have fallen straight into VFD’s clutches. The youngest is still a baby. VFD will be all she knows. He cannot bear that idea.

If they ever end up here, he swears, he will show them the other side of the coin.

* * *

VFD is a good and noble organisation, Jacques wants to tell the Baudelaire children. And your parents were good and noble people.

He is not strictly sure if this is true.

This is not an insult to Beatrice and Bertrand’s memory, because if they are anything other than good, he is probably a monster.

He doesn’t get to tell them anything important in the end.

“You disgust me,” Olaf tells him, and Jacques wonders idly if he might agree with that.

“Likewise,” he says instead.

Olaf just laughs.

“Please just leave those children alone,” Jacques begs. “All of you. Leave them alone.”

“Why doesn’t your side?” Olaf says. “Their parents never wanted them to be a part of this.”

He doesn’t have a good answer for that. He still doesn’t have one when he dies.

* * *

Dewey has all the answers. 

He has the answers to everything, recorded in hundreds of books in a secret library, and it isn’t until he’s dying that he realises that none of the answers match the questions. 

Has he been asking all the wrong questions?

He knows the names of every volunteer and fire-starter. He knows that Lemony Snicket is alive. He knows who started the fire that killed Beatrice and Bertrand, and he knows how Bertrand liked his tea.

He does not know if he has made the right choices.

The spear in his chest is a probable indication that he hasn’t, but Bertrand made all the right choices too, and he died anyway. 

It hurts so much. 

A part of him is desperately hoping that Frank or Ernest will come outside, or both, and they could work together, that would be very nice indeed, and that they will save him somehow because they always know what to do.

No one comes.

He hopes that the Baudelaires don’t get the blame.

He hopes Olaf gets what’s coming to him.

He hopes his brothers forgive each other and survive this.

He hopes his child will grow up brave and smart in a quiet world.

He hopes.

And it all comes out as “ _ Kit. _ ”

* * *

Kit grieves.

She has lost so many people, and they have taken all the answers with them. Truth be told, she is preemptively grieving herself because there’s no one left to do it and she doesn’t think she’s getting out of this alive.

She doesn’t think she wants to.

Despite everything, she really believed she and Dewey could be together at the end of it all. The two of them with their child, far away from VFD like Ernest, and Bertrand, and even Beatrice had wanted by the end.

She hopes Ernest has walked away from this mess. The hotel fire isn’t a good sign, but if anyone was going to find a way out, it would be him. She may hate his guts (and she may not even remember why at this point) but someone should get what they want.

She doesn’t take the apple when it’s offered to her. She probably could, she can’t imagine it would really affect the baby at this point, but she does the selfish thing instead, because she is so tired and the quiet world is the one beyond this. 

Kit dies, and for the first time in a long time, it is her choice alone.

* * *

“This is it?” Lemony asks, eyes drifting over the small congregation in front of him. “This is everyone?”

R, Frank, Ernest. There are more out there somewhere, but these are the people who  _ know. _ The kids who grew up together, shared sweets, the teenagers who snuck around the halls at night, the adults who betrayed each other and loved each other.

“This is everyone, Lem,” R says. 

“The final four,” Frank says. “Who will be the final winner of the sugar bowl?”

“Very funny,” Ernest says, approvingly.

They’re odd, those two. It’s almost as if, when Dewey died, he split himself between them. Frank makes strange, dorky jokes when he’s feeling awkward. Ernest has a frog pin on his tie that he fiddles with in the same way Dewey would have. Lemony doesn’t believe in spirits, he just thinks that they’ve carried their brother’s legacy forward in every way.

“Bea is asking after you,” Lemony tells them. “She says you promised to take her to a fountain somewhere?”

“For her namesake,” Frank says, tone clipped again. “Who knows what trouble she’ll be getting herself into?”

“She’s welcome in Winnipeg anytime,” R says. “I’d rather like to see her. If she’s anything like her mother, I’m sure she’ll enjoy that immensely.”

“Kit loved you,” Lemony says.

“And she loved you,” R replies. It’s not like he doesn’t know this, but a reminder never hurts now she’s not here to say it herself.

“Beatrice never shut up about either of you,” Frank contributes.

“And neither did Bertrand,” Ernest says, tapping his fingers against his cane, which is resting beside his chair. He’s been using it since the fire. It’s awfully easy to tell the brothers apart now.

“I’ve been writing to Jerome about Jacques,” Frank says. “He would like you all to know that Jacques talked about you all the time. You too, Lemony.”

“We  _ all  _ talk about Lemony all the time,” R points out, smiling. “Even when he was dead, we always had something to say.”

“Dewey knew,” Ernest says. “That you weren’t dead. Or at least Bertrand suspected that he suspected. We exchanged some letters.”

“Dewey knew everything,” Lemony says fondly. “That’s what made him and Kit such a good pair. Little know-it-alls.”

Dewey did not know everything. Neither did Kit. He understands that now, just like he understands that he can write down everything that happened to the Baudelaires and never know what it was truly like for them, that he can never know whether Beatrice and Bertrand were in love with him, and never know what his brother and sister were thinking in their last moments.

But he knows that they loved him in some way, and that he loves them in a multitude of ways, and that the only way to protect himself from the fires that will keep burning on, is to keep loving them and to keep loving these people he’s drinking tea with, and his niece who laughs like her mother, and that eventually, this will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please do come chat to me about this or anything asoue at deweysdenouement on tumblr and leave a comment letting me know what you thought! it was lovely to write for the sugar bowl gen again and i hope to have some more stories to tell. until then, i will be crying about the tragedy of it all


End file.
